


Of Jedi Princesses and Trolls on the Bridge

by hebravelyranaway



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Greyish to Dark Side Revan, Humor, Jedi are terrible at keeping secrets, Oblivious!Bastila, Revan Remembers, She's significantly less Sithy than my other portrayals, Troll!Jolee, Troll!Revan, but she's still a Sith, meaning she doesn't do anything evil on-screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-07-28 15:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20066599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hebravelyranaway/pseuds/hebravelyranaway
Summary: In which Bastila is terrible at hiding things and Revan and Jolee are a little  bit too amused by that fact.





	Of Jedi Princesses and Trolls on the Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Knights of the Old Republic and any recognizable characters and plot elements are the property of Bioware, Lucas Arts...and probably Disney, at this point, since they own Star Wars, now. Anyway, the point is that KotOR does not belong to me, and I am not making any money off of this story.

The trouble, at least from Bastila's point of view, all started during their stop in Kashyyk. Bastila had not been able to control her nerves after Cierra’s encounter with the ancient computer Revan had reprogrammed, and as a result, she had been...a bit more abrupt with her charge than usual. 

In her defense, it had not just been her uncertainty over whether or not the computer would recognize Cierra, but the _very dark sided_ answers that Cierra had given the computer, and its assertion that Cierra’s answers ‘matched the pattern in memory’, that had shaken Bastila so badly. The answers the ex-Sith had given had made her worry that Revan had remembered herself and was about to make Bastila pay for the Council’s lies, but thankfully, nothing of the sort had happened. Cierra had not shown any sign of behavior change during or after the encounter, other than extreme annoyance at Bastila for her latest lecture on the dangers of the dark side. The woman must think she was completely neurotic, by now.

“But why would it open up for me when it wouldn’t open up for anyone else?” Cierra was asking Jolee in a puzzled voice while pointedly ignoring Bastila’s existence, even though she was sitting only feet from her and knew much more about the mission they were on than Jolee did. Yes, perhaps that last lecture had been…a bit undeserved. Cierra had only given the answers she had, she’d insisted, because the computer in question had most likely been reprogrammed by a Sith Lord known to be a ruthless military commander who never let compassion get in the way of making advantageous tactical decisions. 

“I don’t know, kid, that sure is unusual. It was almost like it recognized you,” Jolee said, looking equally puzzled.

Bastila felt her heart practically leap in her throat in panic.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she butted into the conversation, even though Cierra had made it very clear that She Was Not Talking to Her. “How would it possibly recognize her? You’ve never been to Kashyyk before, have you, Cierra?” 

Instead of ignoring her further, Cierra turned to her and blinked in surprise as if she had just noticed her sitting there, then accepted her into the conversation without further comment as if she hadn’t been ignoring her for the last ten minutes. This didn’t make Bastila relax, however. The other woman had a way of turning her own arguments back on her and twisting words when she was least expecting it, tactics that she fell back on all the more when she was angry.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, surprising Bastila with the surprising lack of hostility in her tone. It only made her tenser, however, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I’ve told you that my memories have been a little fuzzy and unreliable since I got that head injury on Taris. I very well could have been. How can I know for certain whether I’ve been there or not?” she said, her voice breaking in distress.

Oh. Oh, Force. There were tears in Cierra’s eyes. This was the former Dark Lord of the Sith, but she wasn’t _really_ that, anymore, Bastila harshly reminded herself. The Council had made her into someone completely new, and it was _so_ unfair of her to let knowledge of her previous personality color her judgment of who she was now. She couldn’t imagine any Dark Lord of the Sith pretending to cry in order to throw off suspicion, no matter how effective a tactic it might have been. Showing weakness of any kind was not something that Sith _ever_ did, period. That much was clear from the lessons on Sith psychology she had taken to prepare for this mission.

One of the only things about Cierra’s previous identity that the Council had kept intact was her intelligence, and thus her facility for tactics and strategy. She simply must have intuited the type of answers the computer was looking for, as she had claimed.

“I—I don’t know,” Bastila said, guiltily twisting her tunic in her hands before she could stop herself. “But it does not make sense that a Sith Lord would design the computer with you specifically in mind. Perhaps it wasn’t looking for a specific a person, but for neural patterns that represent a more general way of thinking.”

Jolee frowned in thought.

“Yes, but if the computer is looking for more general patterns of thinking rather than individual variations in biology, why wouldn’t it open up for me? I’ve fought against the Sith in my time. I know how to think like those bastards and could have guessed at the kind of answers the program would have wanted me to give, but the damn thing didn’t even ask me any questions, just refused to open up at all.”

For some reason, Jolee was glaring at Cierra when he said that, and Bastila pursed her lips nervously. Jolee couldn't have known who she was, could he? Sure, he had lived in Kashyyk when Revan had first come, but any sane person would have had a more extreme reaction to someone he knew to be a former Dark Lord of the Sith knocking at his door than giving her a few annoying tasks as a test of character. Unfortunately, nothing about Jolee's behavior so far had suggested that he was entirely sane. Thankfully for _Bastila's_ sanity, though, Cierra just looked amused rather than suspicious at his attitude.

“Well, since a Dark Lord of the Sith is the one who programmed it, I suppose it’s not surprising that she was a real ass. Sorry it gave you so much trouble, old man,” she said, sounding a lot more like she was holding back laughter than massive regret. Jolee gave her a playful glare.

“Well, it’s hardly your fault that it only responded to you, is it? Revan’s the one who programmed the damn thing to be so obnoxious, and you’re not the Dark Lord, are you? Although, I wouldn’t put it past you to do something like deprive a poor old man of his only source of amusement while stuck in self-exile.”

“You’d better believe it,” she smirked.

Bastila cleared her throat to draw their attention back to her, the conversation striking a little bit too close to the truth for comfort. She really would have to talk to Jolee about being a little bit more discrete if he _did_ know.

“Perhaps Cierra was able to trick the computer into opening up simply because she is a better actor than you are. She used to be a smuggler, after all, and thus has probably had more…practice putting on a false front than you have.”

“Yes, and we all know that Jedi are terrible at lying, so I guess it’s good that I was a smuggler before I was a Jedi, if that’s true,” Cierra joked.

Bastila thanked the Force that the Jedi were not nearly as terrible at lying as the woman believed, or this mission would have been doomed from the start.

“Hey, I’ll have you know that I was a smuggler once upon a time, too, so that argument holds just as much weight as a water bucket on Tatooine.”

“You were a _smuggler_?” Cierra and Bastila said at the same time, though in vastly different tones. _Force_, but what kind of miscreant had Bastila allowed to come with them on this mission? As if Revan didn't have enough bad influences on this ship as it was with Canderous and HK-47 on board. She swore, she would never understand what Cierra found so amusing about that horrible droid. Perhaps having a macabre sense of humor was a lesser-known prerequisite for being a Sith Lord.

“Eh. Well, part time, while I was a Padawan. The Jedi Council was taking its time acting, as usual, so I had to smuggle food and supplies to the population of a world that was being blockaded. Got a partner, got a ship, and I may have appropriated some funds from rich people in the process of raising money for my operation, yes, but I thought of it as a tax on the greedy.”

Cierra smirked.

“Good one.”

“Well, I suppose that’s not…_entirely_ a conflict of interest with your mission as a Jedi, if your motives were to help those in need,” Bastila allowed reluctantly.

“So glad to have your approval, kid. Don’t get too enthusiastic about that praise, though, or I might faint.”

She narrowed her eyes at the frustrating old man who seemed to both delight in and parody his own cantankerous ways, and may or may not be trying to give Cierra hints about her previous identity.

“You needn’t worry on that front.”

“So, what else do you think that we should know about you, Jolee?” Cierra leaned forward mischievously. “Anything else that you think Bastila would disapprove of?”

Bastila turned a slightly more playful glare upon her companion, then, though she felt something within her ease with relief at the change of subject. Once again, disaster had narrowly been averted, and Cierra had been kept from knowledge of her previous life. While it made part of her sick with guilt to hide something like this, if Cierra ever found out about her previous identity, it could trigger a return of all of her memories, and that would put everyone on the ship in danger. 

While Revan, by all reports, had never been prone to purposeless violence like Malak was, she had been ruthless in the face of betrayal, whether perceived or actual. If she ever began remembering what the Council had done to her, Bastila had no illusions that she wouldn’t immediately try to kill all of the Jedi aboard the _Ebon Hawk_, at the very least. There was no way that she would simply be content to go along with the Council's plans, even if a temporary alliance _would_ give her the best opportunity to take down Malak. She would be far too enraged by what the Council had done to her. No, it would be safer for everyone if Cierra, friend though she was, was kept in the dark.


End file.
